Valerie Gillies

Valerie Gillies is an internationally known and highly regarded poet. She was the Edinburgh Maker, poet laureate to the city, 2005 - 2008.

Her poetry collections include Tweed Journey (1989) which has been described as ‘a key text in contemporary writing’ (SB Kelly). Other award-winning volumes include Each Bright Eye (1977), The Ringing Rock (1995) and The Lightning Tree (2002). She is a regular contributor to major anthologies.

Valerie writes in regions from the Borders to the Highlands, from the Inner Hebrides to the Angus glens, from Orkney to Galloway.

She often works collaboratively with visual artists, notably in a series of poem-inscriptions with different sculptors at sites in southern Scotland. The book Men and Beasts: Wild Men and Tame Animals of Scotland (2000), together with the touring exhibition of the same name, was the result of a year-long collaboration with the photographer Rebecca Marr.

She received a Creative Scotland Award in 2005 to write The Spring Teller, a book of landmark poems inspired by Scotland’s wells and springs (Luath, 2008).

Valerie is an inspirational teacher of creative writing in schools, colleges, and universities, and she has held several writing fellowships across the country. She is a literary arts practitioner in psychiatric and general hospitals with Artlink. She has edited the Scottish Poetry Library’s first-ever Poetry Map of Scotland, which maps locations and living poets on their interactive website.

Valerie lives in Edinburgh with her husband, the Celtic scholar Professor William Gillies. They have a son and two daughters.

A few poems to sample:

'The Wedding Reel'

'Maeve in Manhattan' (Audio from The Jewel Box CD)

'Surf-Speak'

"Gillies' poetry shows a masterly fluency with form kept taut by its over-riding themes... this is polyglot poetry, yet it has a remarkably unbookish and outdoors feel."

S B Kelly, Scotland on Sunday

Valerie Gillies' poetry collections include The Ringing Rock (1995) and The Lightning Tree (2002). She is a regular contributor to major anthologies such as The Faber Book of Scottish Poetry. Valerie has won the Eric Gregory Award for Poetry and three Scottish Arts Council book Awards.

Her work includes many collaborative projects with visual artists and musicians, notably in a series of poem-inscriptions with different sculptors at sites in Southern Scotland. The book Men and Beasts: wild men and tame animals of Scotland (2000), together with the touring exhibition of the same name, was the result of a collaboration with the photographer Rebecca Marr.

"A poet of unusual technical ability"

Shirley Toulson, British Book News

"I like the way in which these poems are rooted in the elemental world... the craft and truth are one."

Robert Nye, The Times

"Gillies writes of place, history, landscape, myth and legend. The Lightning Tree will enhance her reputation... Its language is musical, energetic, approachable; its subject-matter, life enhancing and invigorating; its themes fundamental and provocative."

Douglas Lipton, Northwords

Copies of Valerie's books are available to buy from:

The Scottish Poetry Library Bookshop

Luath Press Bookshop

Amazon The Book Depository

Valerie Gillies was the Edinburgh Makar, poet laureate to the city, in 2005. Her 'official' poems include The Balm Well in 2005, A Place Apart in 2006 and To Edinburgh, a poem composed for the opening by HRH Princess Anne of the new Edinburgh District Council building, Waverley Court, in 2007.

Poet Valerie Gillies and photographer Rebecca Marr read their book Men and Beasts with Scottish deerhound friends in Makars' Court, the writers' museum, Edinburgh- Royal Mile.

Read the poem "To Edinburgh" here.